Best pasture for chickens (Country Life) taken from OSU Today
Jim Hermes is an extension poultry specialist at Oregon State University. He says the best pasture for
chickens is one with a variety of plant species for a couple of reasons.
Best pasture for chickens
A chicken's salad bar should produce plenty of seeds and attract insects
Jodi Henke
Putting chickens out on pasture is a popular management method for many small flock owners. The birds can
freely scratch and peck over a large area, eating to their heart’s content.
Jim Hermes is an extension poultry specialist at Oregon State University. He says the best pasture for chickens
is one with a variety of plant species for a couple of reasons.
"Nutritionally, the value of the pasture is really tied up in the insects and in any seeds that are created by the
pasture grasses," says Hermes. "The grass itself is not of particular value in a poultry diet. They will consume
some of the grasses, particularly early in the season, but as you get later it’s not providing very much nutrition
other than the birds’ ability to find insects and seeds."
Unlike other pasture-grazing animals, chickens aren’t able to digest plants, because they lack the enzymes to
break down the cellulose. But even though chickens don’t consume much of the forage, the pasture still needs
to be managed. Poultry can’t move around very well when the grass is a foot-tall. Going through with the
mower is one option, but Hermes recommends cattle or sheep to mow it down in a rotational grazing system.
"If you have some cattle ahead of the chickens, then the cattle will keep the grasses down a little bit, move
them around, and then have the chickens follow behind," says Hermes. "They’ll clean up materials that are left
behind by the cattle, they’ll spread everything around, they’ll find all the insects and things in the manure.
They’ll pick up nutrients that the cattle don’t digest so it’s a great relationship."
Chickens also provide good nutrition for the pasture. Their manure leaves behind a healthy dose of nitrogen,
potassium and phosphorus.
Click here for chicken-friendly pasture plant suggestions: (A) below
Learn more about pastured poultry production (B) below: page not found when link was clicked
http://www.avianaquamiser.com/posts/Plants_in_traditional_chicken_pastures/
(A) Plants in Traditional Chicken Pastures
The main reason I hunted down a copy of Raising Poultry on Pasture was to
figure out which pasture plants are best for chickens to eat. The unfortunate answer is that most people
raising chickens on pasture just use typical forage grasses and legumes, assuming that chickens eat the
same thing as cows, even though their stomachs and dietary needs are entirely different. Small wonder
that one chapter's author basically said that chickens don't get much except vitamins and minerals from
pasture.
In a previous post, I've written about ways of combining chickens with cows or
vegetable gardens to spice up rotational pastures, so I won't repeat that information
here. Instead, I thought I'd list the plants various medium-scale producers have
planted in their pastures:
Unimproved pastures are quite common. In other words, farmers put their
chickens on some kind of low grass/weed mixture that's probably been kept tree-less
through annual bush-hogging and/or grazing with other animals. One unimproved
pasture listed in Raising Poultry on Pasture was made up of fescue, thinning brome,
broadleaf weeds, and lespedeza.
 Legumes are cited by many producers as being favorites of their
chickens. Specifically, white clover (New Zealand and other varieties) is mentioned by several
chicken keepers as a good long term cover. Subclovers (subterranean clovers) are useful in very
poor soil and are commonly grown in Australia, Texas, and California. One farmer mentioned
growing peas in an early spring pasture, but said that the chickens didn't get as excited about the
succulent peas as he thought they would.
 Broadleaf plants, in general, are preferred by chickens over grasses. No wonder --- chickens
aren't ruminants and they aren't able to digest grass any more than you can. I wonder if there are
weeds like dock, plantain, or others that stand up well to heavy chicken scratching and browsing
and are still tasty for our chickens?
 Grasses are usually mixed in with broadleaf plants on permanent pastures
to hold the soil in place, even if the grasses don't do much for the
chickens. Common grasses in the chicken pasture include orchardgrass,
perennial ryegrass, tall fescue, and annual ryegrass. Although I don't think
grasses provide much food for chickens directly, Joel Salatin wrote that grass
provides habitat for grasshoppers, which his chickens love, so perhaps these
nearly inedible plants have a place in the chicken pasture after all.
 Grains are used by many chicken producers for early spring pasture,
especially by farmers who use the chickens in rotation with row crops and thus till the pasture
every year. Oats and annual rye are both listed as early spring pasture crops. On the other hand,
grains are grasses, and chickens don't tend to get much out of them once the leaves age and firm
up.
Pasture management is another important point to consider when planning for your chickens'
needs. When plants get over four to eight inches tall (depending on who you talk to), the leaves become
higher in carbon and less digestible by chickens. Many farmers advocate mowing or heavy grazing to
keep plants short and always producing more green shoots. On the other hand, I wonder whether taller
grass would provide a more diversified habitat for the insects chickens crave?
Have you planted a traditional pasture for chickens? What did you put in it? Which plants did your
chickens gravitate toward?